Sibling Warmth
by SoulKit
Summary: It's raining outside. Apollo is drenched. Trucy isn't having any of it. *sibling fic* *pre-case 4 of AJ:AA*


**Before anyone says anything, this is set **_**before **_**Apollo knows Trucy is his sister.**

* * *

"What happened to you?"

Apollo stared at Trucy in something so akin to shock he was actually speechless for a few seconds. When he finally regained control of his mouth, he wasn't very surprised at the sarcasm that managed to escape from a small, rather unused part of his mind and casually slip out of his mouth.

"Took a bath. Forgot to strip," He replied, feeling the rain drip off his hair and down his collar as he tried not to shudder. "It's raining, genius."

"Really?" Apollo took this opportunity to glare at the fifteen year old now staring out of the window in fascination as water hammered into the glass, creating a maelstrom of twisting shapes. The cold and the dark seeped into apartment from the midwinter evening, a bleak, grey reflection of the miserable storm outside. He'd just returned from interviewing a client and, rather than spend the few hours that remained of the day alone in his own, lonely apartment, he had decided to head to the Wrights' place and try and work through some of the information he'd just acquired. Of course the heavens would choose that exact moment to open up and release a waterfall of rain down on the city.

Trucy suddenly turned back to Apollo, taking in his drenched form with a melodramatic look of worry that almost bordered on fear before she pulled away from the window almost guiltily. "I didn't even notice."

"What have you been _doing _that you didn't notice _that_?" Apollo demanded as he toed his way out of his shoes and wrestled out of his hoodless coat, shuffling miserably through the eternally messy Wright Anything Agency towards the kitchen as he did so. He was chilled to the bone, and the office/living space was not exactly a warm paradise to offer comfort to his aching body.

"I need to practice, Polly," Trucy replied indignantly. "I'm not going to notice something as mundane as a little bit of rain."

Only Trucy Wright would call an almost fully-fledged storm 'mundane'.

"Yeah, I know," Apollo sighed, too exhausted to argue. He really needed to invest in some sort of transportation that didn't involve him getting soaked to the bone every time the clouds unleashed their fury on the silly little mortals of the world below. "But if a client shows up today, they're on their own."

The shivering started almost the second he turned on the kettle, as if the tremors had been waiting for the precise moment when the promise of something warm was only minutes away just so they could make the wait that much more agonising. Arctic ice seemed to have become trapped in his marrow, chilling him inside and out, and he didn't exactly keep spare clothes at the place where he worked so he was doomed to spend the day inside what now felt like a wetsuit rather than what was actually a rather expensive suit.

It felt a bit, in this minute of hopelessness, that he was never going to be warm or comfortable again.

"Polly?"

Apollo turned to see Trucy, even this early on a Saturday morning, dressed up in her magician get-up and looking at him curiously. "Ye—es?" He frowned as his teeth began chattering so hard it was actually audible over the maelstrom happening outside and made it nearly impossible to speak.

"Aren't you going to take those wet clothes off?"

Apollo had the sudden desire to have Phoenix walk in at that moment just in time to hear that sentence and freak out at the lack of context it came with. Where was lawyer-turned-poker player anyway?

"D-don't h-h-ave any—thing t-to change-ge i-into." He managed to stutter out, but luckily Trucy spoke shivering-Apollo language and frowned before grabbing his wrist and pulling him away from the now boiling kettle. "H-hey!"

"Don't be stupid, Polly! You can't spend all day like that!"

Apollo's confusion drew to a crescendo when he saw he was being dragged towards Phoenix's room before realisation crashed over him in a wave of embarrassment that left his face a lot warmer than it had been all day and his insides writhing in mortification. She wasn't… she didn't really mean for him to…

Without hesitation Trucy burst into her adopted father's room as Apollo spouted out stuttered gibberish behind her and prayed to every deity he had ever heard of that Phoenix _was not in the room._ To his surprise, the older man wasn't, and it distracted Apollo enough to allow Trucy the opportunity to grab a discarded hoodie, a t-shirt and pair of track pants before shoving them into the young lawyer's arms and leaving the room as quickly as she had entered.

"Put them on!"

Blinking, Apollo found himself unable to move for a moment before gingerly placing the clothes he had been given on the queen size bed that took up most of the room. There he stood, dripping in the middle of his idol's bedroom, drinking in Phoenix's scent and doing his very best not to freak out. He had gotten a lot better in his fanboy ways with all the months he'd spent with Phoenix having his previous opinion of the man well and truly destroyed, but… putting on his clothes? That the man himself had worn before?

Surely it was acceptable to spend a few minutes freaking out, right?

Eventually he managed to snap out of his reverie and began subconsciously peeling his clothes off, feeling for some bizarre reason like he was being watched. He stripped all the way down to his boxers before spending _another _few minutes battling internally with himself before reasoning it was simply to try and warm up, nothing more. It wasn't like he was going to take the clothes home and sleep next to them. He would hang up his sodden suit and by the end of the day it would be dry enough to at least wear without giving himself hypothermia. For now the clothes would do to trap some of his feeble body heat next to his skin, rather than letting his body shiver for the rest of all time.

And if Phoenix walked in and found Apollo wearing his clothes… Well, at least the embarrassment and constant teasing would keep his face warm through the winter.

The time spend in his boxers was brumal against his bare skin, and by the time he was padding back into the main room, Apollo's teeth were still chattering in earnest. Shuffling uncomfortably in the clothes several sizes too big for him, Apollo did as he had planned and laid his wet clothes out to dry, and, with the air of someone who had no intention of going outside or doing any sort of work, Apollo quite happily collapsed onto the couch.

It took him a moment to realise that the dull, thundering rain beat was no longer the only sound in the small apartment, instead being relegated to background noise as a small heater blasted warmth in Apollo's general direction. He grinned, mentally thanking Trucy as he leaned forward and shifted it closer towards him in an effort to soak up the heat.

"Here." Trucy's voice made him look up to find a steaming mug of tea in the teenager's hand. Brief suspicions about some sort of magic involvement skated through Apollo's mind, but right now he didn't care if she had accidentally added cyanide instead of sugar. It was actual tea, made by someone that wasn't _himself _no less. White vapour uncurled in tempting tendrils from the rim, and Apollo accepted it with a heartfelt murmur of thanks.

Trucy gave him a faintly offended look – as if being a decent human being was her purpose in life, rather than being a budding magician who helped an attorney solve crimes when she wasn't at school – before placing herself cross legged on the floor and losing herself in the sheets of paper scattered across the floor in an order only she would understand, the mechanics of the various tricks she was trying to learn for her up and coming show pasted upon them. Apollo was rather thankful for this as well because Trucy had a tendency to be snappish when she was interrupted in the middle of working out a trick and therefore meant Apollo didn't have to tax his tired mind on keeping a conversation going.

Instead, he sank back into Phoenix's clothes and marvelled at how warm they were, only feeling slightly guilty as he surreptitiously breathed in their smell. Deciding to save the topic of where the clothes' owner actually was at the moment for when he could be bothered asking (not that he didn't care, but Phoenix was more than capable of looking after himself as long as he wasn't getting hit by cars or falling off bridges) and focussed instead on trying to rub some feeling back into his frigid toes. Tremors still danced over him, and he huffed at the discomfort that followed every shudder, making his muscles ache and his skin itch.

"Polly!" Trucy growled a few minutes later and making the young attorney jump in surprise. "How am I supposed to think with you making all that noise?" She rose from the floor before Apollo's sluggish thoughts could form a response. He could only watch slightly guilty and confused as she stalked towards her own bedroom without bothering to take her notes with her. He should probably apologise.

However, before he could, he suddenly found himself half-buried in the thick down of Trucy's quilt which was dumped on him unceremoniously from above. Seconds later, soft fingers poked him in the back, forcing him towards the front edge of the seat.

"Hey, what are you—?" Apollo's protests died as Trucy climbed in behind him like a cat, all lithe grace and bristling indignation.

"You've not even dried your hair. Call yourself a lawyer? How can you be expected to hold other peoples' lives in your hands when you can't even take care of yourself?"

Apollo spluttered in indignation as a dry, clean towel was dragged through his hair that the rain had already quite thoroughly ruined. He couldn't say he was surprised when Trucy's hands belied the irritation in her voice, dabbing the water from Apollo's nape and moving with practiced steadiness through the damp spikes along his crown. A magician need steady hands after all. Trucy had somehow instilled her much shorter legs on either side of Apollo's hips, which left Apollo to either perch awkwardly on the edge of the seat, or alternatively sprawl back against Trucy's chest. The first was pretty damn uncomfortable, and the other…

His thoughts only lasted a minute or so, skimming through his options rather haphazardly before allowing his body to slowly slump backwards. If he was more awake, he might have found their position inappropriate, but it wasn't like either of them felt attraction for the other. Trucy was like a little sister to him, and it felt nice to be looked after when he had spent so much of his life having to look after himself. Besides, Trucy naturally gave out physical contact whenever she could – whether it was hugs for no reason or reassuring nudges in the courtroom – so this probably felt completely natural to her.

Sure enough, a moment later, Trucy merely shifted to better accommodate him as she continued her ministrations. Apollo felt a strange sense of comfort rise over him as he gradually allowed himself to relax. He felt… he felt like he _belonged, _as if he and Trucy actually were brother and sister, as if Trucy genuinely thought he was someone worth looking after, chasing away the chills with the feathery mass of the quilt draped over them and her own heat gradually filling the impromptu cocoon.

By the time Trucy had dropped the towel on the floor, Apollo was almost catatonic, his eyes heavy and drowsy and his body lax in Trucy's clumsy embrace. Any notion of working or even attempting to find out where his employer was had been wiped from his mind long ago, and he only managed a faint grunt as Trucy shifted, getting more comfortable rather than moving away before she propped her chin on Apollo's head.

"Thanks." Apollo sighed at last, letting his eyes drift shut fully before Trucy's quiet reply brought a tired but warm grin to his lips.

"You're welcome, Polly."

And he could hear the smile in it as he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

**So it's been raining all day and somehow this was born out of the depressing atmosphere. May as well cheer myself up, eh? **


End file.
